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Monthly Archives: April 2012

My gawgeous friend Lucie recently told me about a furniture shop in Toronto that she walks past most days. She is madly in love with their yellow chest (top right), in her words “I want this tres expensive chest SO BADLY!” The shop is called Burnett and is owned by a husband and wife team who specialise in restoring and decorating vintage furniture.

The pieces are bright and beautiful and it has made me want to get out my stripper and paint brushes and get to work on some more furniture. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for a potential project.

In a week full of strops and screams, I’ve discovered that the busier this wee man is, the happier and therefore more chilled out he becomes. The only challenge is to think of enough activites to keep him amused. One recent thing that’s proving quite tricky is Noah’s fear of flies. This includes real and imagnary flies and any black mark or speck on a surface he can see. The poor guy loses it and clings onto you for dear life. It’s going to be a looooong summer with my windows open. We know it’ll pass, but until then distraction is key.

A nice distraction recently has been Noah’s aromatherapy playdough. We’ve made duckies and hearts and he enjoys tearing it up Munchkin style.

A few years ago when I started jogging for the first time I found it hard to push myself to go faster and run for longer. If right now you’re envisioning me breezing swiftly along on a lycra-clad, 5k morning run, please stop. In reality, I was (and still am) a soft-around-the-edges, asthmatic who has never jogged for more than 20 mins straight in my life. I used to daydream quite a lot while I ran and I once let it slip to a friend that to push myself harder I imagined that I was in a race and that my child was there watching, encouraging me to go on. Hil-bloody-arious. Never lived it down. A few weeks later my friend dreamt I had a little girl who I named Gladys (!) and ever since then i’ve been “RUNNING FOR GLADYS!”

I thought of this today when Munchkin and I went along to Holyrood Palace and stumbled upon the Edinburgh Half Marathon. Yes, i’m so on the pulse of what’s going on in this city. I had planned a quiet picnic and instead was met with lots of sweat, panting and Lucozade. I’d never been to a race before and I had quite a strange and embarrassing reaction. I started crying… I think what did it was the crowd clapping and cheering support to the runners passing by, it just got me. Luckily, it’s quite easy to hide a soggy face when you’re clutching a toddler, so we wandered through the crowds and then had a good walk around Arthur’s Seat.